Conversations: It's About Time You Got To Know #Educolor

In case you hadn't noticed, the #educolor hashtag has been floating around a lot on Twitter lately and made the Twitter Trending list recently following last night's Twitter chat.

A teacher named Christina Torres (@biblio_phile) pulled together some highlights using Storify and you can read them all above. The topic was code-switching. I'm sure there's a history of previously monthly chats and topics.

Torres and I don't know each other but I've been following her for a while now and have shared her updates with you since about a year ago. Check that out here.

According to Topsy, the first use of the #educolor hashtag was by Melinda Anderson (@mdawriter) two years ago, along with Xian Barrett and Jose Vilson. Here's an early piece about the group from TakePart. Read more about the hashtag's history (yes, hashtags have history now) via MDA's September 2014 post here.

I don't know the hashtag well enough to say whether it's great or not, but I do know that both reformers and reform critics tend not to come from the poor and/or minority communities that they're arguing about, and that teachers too tend to be white and middle-class. So I can't help but hope that an ongoing discussion about racial awareness in schools might be a good thing. Or not -- some of you may know better and think otherwise.